Ten or twelve years ago, it was easier to write about fashion: you would see a Prada show and dissect it. Some would love it, others would hate it, but it was something that kept the fashion discourse alive. But time has passed, we have changed and fashion has transformed. We can't complain, changing is good because it usually implies an evolution of some sort. Yet, in our confusing times and absurdist world, it's easy to wonder if we aren't actually devolving, while the fashion discourse has moved from the runway to different spaces and aspects of our lives, becoming maybe more superficial and surreal as well.
For quite a while now a new space has turned into an alternative runway – the court. There are more high-profile court cases nowadays, some of them involving famous people, celebrities or even fashion designers and brands. These cases have obviously shifted the collective attention to the court, turning it into an unlikely locus for the fashion discourse.
The Balenciaga and bondage bear/legal papers case, the Adidas Vs Thom Browne trial and Hermès/Metabirkin saga may have prompted some of us to sit down and study legal texts or even become fluent in legalese, but they also pushed the majority of us to comment about aspects that are not directly related to the cases, to play at being juries, take sides, marvel at exorbitant attorneys' fees and dissect the outfits worn in court.
In the last few days, the collective attention switched onto another prominent court case: actor and wellness advocate Gwyneth Paltrow appeared in a Utah court over a collision at Park City, a luxury ski resort, in 2016. The ski crash accuser, retired optometrist Terry Sanderson, claims that Paltrow allegedly hit him and didn't stop to check upon the incident.
Now, the point about this trial is that nobody really cares about the verdict that should be reached soon. That's not because Paltrow's vagina is not involved in it (a missed opportunity here, considering that it's almost 25 years since she's had the Brazilian wax by the J Sisters that allegedly changed her life…), the reason is that nobody cares about it, period. Yet, the case spawned an incredible amount of features in which law and responsibilities weren't discussed, but Paltrow's wardrobe was meticulously dissected.
Fashion maniacs spotted a cream knitted high-necked jumper by Loro Piana, by now a brand favoured by modern dictators and war criminals à la Vladimir Putin and obnoxious politicians à la Rishi Sunak (must be hell working at Loro Piana and knowing you are dressing these characters…), now also a hit among billionaires obsessed with dubious wellness habits.
Then there was another cream jumper, this time by G Label by Goop (a clever product placement, well done; wearing your own brand at your own trial is so in, but Thom Browne did it first during the Adidas trial), then a green wool coat from The Row, lug-soled boots from Prada and G Label by Goop gold chain jewelry. There was also a dark navy skirt paired with a cashmere-collared button-down and a grey blazer with matching trousers.
The neutral wardrobe, delicate, soft and reassuring, contributed to create an image of credible and relatable innocence, but the designer clothes and the cashmere also pointed at luxury and at a sense of muted power dressing.
For those fashion fans addicted to visually striking over-embellished designs on Instagram, this luxury normcore was a desirable palate cleanser and suddenly opened their eyes to the possibility of practical ensembles made with the most luxurious materials.
Paltrow's studied wardrobe definitely took center-stage, but there was something else that proved entertaining, the interactions between her and the plaintiff's attorney. "May I ask how tall you are?" asked Kristin Van Orman at a certain point. "Just under 5' 10," replied Paltrow. "I am so jealous!", Van Orman expressed, while Paltrow dramatically commented, "I think I'm shrinking, though…" and Van Orman, "You and me both…I have to wear four-inch heels just to make it 5'5!" "They're very nice," commented Paltrow, obviously lying.
"You're not trained in accident reconstruction?" Van Orman continued later. "Me?" asked Gwyneth, "No". "Neither am I!" answered Van Orman.
While this is pure gold and both Van Orman and Paltrow should be cast as writers or even actors for the false court scenes in "The Good Fight" (imagine Wackner presiding over the "9 ¾ Judicial Circuit" court with Paltrow as witness maybe attached to a drip and injecting herself with vitamins and nutrients like she did during a recent episode of Dr Will Cole's The Art of Being Well podcast…), there were more memorable moments that may have caused writers of legal dramedy series to bang their heads against walls wondering why they never thought about such lines.
Paltrow's lawyer asked: "Private security for my client wanted to bring in treats for the bailiffs for how helpful they've been. So, I wanted to do that transparently and see if there are any objections?"
Unfortunately, they objected, but that was another missed opportunity. What were the treats going to be? A vagina scented candle? A detoxing concoction? A sex-boosting supplement? Phosphatidylcholine (Paltrow's fave intravenous drip)? A cashmere jumper? We have been deprived of another highly entertaining moment here.
How will it end? As stated above, nobody really cares, the case is not important, it is legal fluff, but the clothes and the ensuing fashion discourse, the search for symbolism, innocence and guilt in a cashmere jumper, suddenly are.
But the fashion discourse is permeating all sorts of spheres and social interactions also thanks to new technologies: last week an image of Pope Francis in a chunky puffer coat went viral. Yet those slightly distorted details in the hand or the cross clearly revealed the images had been generated by an AI application.
Created by a 31-year-old construction worker from Chicago who started using the Midjourney Ai image generator after losing his brother and trying to deal with grief, the images were created without any malice. While tripping on mushrooms, the Midjourney user in question decided to come up with images of the Pope in Moncler and Balenciaga's oversized designs.
The results of his prompts - quite good to be honest with Artificial Intelligence borrowing elements from the papal cassock such as the fascia (sash) and the buttons and reapplying them onto the puffer - were first posted on Reddit together with other similar versions and they unexpectedly went viral on social media, firing up the Intenet and causing alarm and positive or negative reactions among those who thought the images were real. The Pope genuinely looked chill in a puffer, a concept that generated more fashion gossip in our absurdist world.
And so fashion has become a key ingredient of the absurdist world we're living in, a distraction and a guilty pleasure, while more important and more tragic things take place all around us. There are boats with migrants in distress in the Mediterranean and Bansky's Louise Michel boat (a humanitarian ship funded by the British street artist) was seized in Lampedusa by Italian authorities after rescuing 178 refugees and migrants, as it violated the new protocols introduced by Italy's far-right government.
There's still civil unrest in Israel where the government planned to assert greater control over the Supreme Court; school shootings never stop in America; the war in Ukraine is continuing; unaddressed climate change keeps on causing natural disasters.
Yet we are spellbound by a court wardrobe exercising its magnetic and subtle power upon us; we are caught into a web of complex fashion speculations sparked by an Artificial Intelligence-generated image created out of boredom during a 'shroom trip.
Maybe this is a failed and faulty version of a world in an endless multiverse, and somewhere else there are better versions of us, living better lives, without useless court cases in which a luxury jumper is more important than the actual facts discussed in the trial. Or maybe, who knows, we are being sucked into a cultural void as powerful and nonsensical as the bagel in Everything Everywhere All At Once.
Maybe one day we will have influencers peacocking outside the courts rather than outside fashion shows and the fashion discourse will mutate again, become even more marvellously superficial than it already is. Then we will know that the void has sucked us in forever. But, till then, you can be sure there will be more high-profile court cases or more bizarre AI generated images to distract us from the issues that truly matter and that we will once again get consumed by the sensationalism of these frivolous yet irrestistible fashion diversions.
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